Strange 3DMarks

[ilovesocks]

A few days ago I OC'd my 6800 (see sig) and as I raised the core, my '05 scores got higher and higher (obviously) until they finally broke 4000 (which was my goal, anyway) at around 375MHz for the core. When I tried to raise the memory speed, I couldn't push it more than a few MHz over stock, and this is with the stock cooling, so I figured that the stock heatsink had a crappy contact with the chips. Oh yeah, I'm doing the OCing with the regular "Clock Frequency" menu on the GeForce 6800 tab of my Advanced display settings (the thing that comes with the card - not RivaTuner or anything like that). The stock speeds are 325/700.

The thing is, when the core finally maxed out at 424MHz, my '05 score was barely over 3500! It was a little frustrating, but then I figured maybe the fact that the core is way over stock and the RAM is so much lower degrades performance.

So then today the NV Silencer 5 Rev.3 came and I slapped her on with some AS5, and luckily I was able to bring it up to 431/811, but the 3DMark05 score was still in the low 3800's.

How did I get that 4000?? Any ideas?

 

[Nubius]

start over and retest and see if you get it again...If you push your card beyond what it can efficiently do...even if it's not getting hot or showing artifacts, it will decrease in score...basically it's not getting enough voltage at the higher speeds....however I don't see why that should be happening at 431/811 but you got 4k at 375/700 or whatever it is you were doing.

Reset it back to stock and check your scores, and go back up is all I can say until you notice the scores go back down you'd have to just settle for whatever the highest is

 

[ilovesocks]

Ah, I see - I'll do that. Thanks Nubius!

 

[ilovesocks]

Just a follow-up - I started the core over at stock and worked it up again, and got 4091 in '05 at 386/811. Weird how the extra 50 or so MHz dropped the score nearly 600 points, but didn't compromise stability.

 

[PizzatheHut06]

I had the same thing happen with my 6800GT. I eventually just settled for clocks with the highest 3DMark scores.